How to Configure a Windows Server 2016 DNS server

Run the following command to retrieve a list of all 130-odd PowerShell DNS functions:

Get-Command -Module DNSServer | Select-Object -Property Name

Use Get-DNSServer to retrieve the local server's configuration data. In the following example, I use Set-DNSServer to migrate configuration data from server01 to server02:

Get-DnsServer -CimSession 'server01' | Set-DnsServer -ComputerName 'server02'

Of course, we use the native PowerShell *-Service cmdlets to operate on the server directly. For instance, to restart the local DNS server we can run:

Restart-Service -Name DNS -Force

Creating a Forward Lookup Zone

Although you can configure a DNS server to do nothing but fulfill name resolution requests and cache the results, the primary work of a Windows DNS server is to host one or more lookup zones.

Let's create a simple forward (that is, hostname-to-IP address) lookup zone for a domain called toms.local.

In DNS Manager, right-click Forward Lookup Zones and select New Zone from the shortcut menu. This launches the New Zone Wizard, which will ask us to specify the following information:

Zone type. Options are primary, secondary, stub, and Active Directory-integrated. Let's choose primary here, and deselect the AD integration option (the AD integraded option is available only on AD DS domain controllers, by the way)

Zone name. In our case, we'll specify toms.local.

Zone file name. We'll accept the default name, which is toms.local.dns. This is a simple plain text file, actually.

Dynamic updates. Accept the default, which is to disallow dynamic updates. In production business networks, you'll want to enable this option so DNS clients can update their DNS records on their own.

By default, your new zone will have two DNS records:

Start of Authority (SOA): This record identifies which server is authoritative for the zone

Name Server (NS): This record identifies the servers that host records for this zone

Right-click the new zone and you'll see various resource record creation options directly in the shortcut menu; these include:

Host (A): This is your "bread and butter" record that identifies a single host

Alias (CNAME): This record allows you to map more than one hostname to a single IP address

Mail Exchanger (MX): This record identifies your company's e-mail server(s) that are attached to the current DNS domain

We'll finish today's tutorial by using PowerShell to define a new A record for a host named 'client1' and verify its existence. To create the record, we use Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA (yes, that's a long command name.)

Add-DnsServerResourceRecordA -Name 'client1' -ZoneName 'toms.local' -IPv4Address 172.16.1.100

We finally run the equally awkward command Get-DnsServerResourceRecord to retrieve client1's A record:

Get-DnsServerResourceRecord -ZoneName 'toms.local' -Name 'client1' | Format-Table -AutoSize

Reviewing our new DNS zone contents.

In the previous screen capture we can see our new client1 A record both in DNS Manager as well as in the Windows PowerShell console